Thursday, October 27, 2005

More Youthful Anti-Semitism

On the heels of this story about the Nazi twin singers, I am appalled by this story:

A poem that praises the murder of Jews by the Nazis has been included in a book of children’s poetry to be distributed to schools in the U.K.

The publication, entitled "Great Minds," features the work of schoolchildren aged 11-18 who won a nationwide literary competition.

But one poem has generated outrage amongst Jewish groups, politicians and Holocaust charities for its anti-Semitic content.

The entry by the 14-year-old Gideon Taylor is apparently written from the viewpoint of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

The publisher of the book praises the youth's ability to write a "poem from the perspective of Adolf Hitler,” and states that they are "not willing to censor" his work.

The poem includes the lines:

Jews are here, Jews are there, Jews are almost everywhere, filling up the darkest places, evil looks upon their faces.

and:

Make them take many paces for being one of the worst races, on their way to a gas chamber, where they will sleep in their manger… I'll be happy Jews have died.

Now, I'm all for not suppressing the creativity of our youth, but I do feel there are limits. And presenting these anti-Semitic verses as an acceptable source of cultural edification for young, impressionable students, is over that line, in my estimation.

11 Comments:

bishul akum said...

"Now, I'm all for not supressing the creativity of our youth, but I do feel there are limits."

Ortho great post! I can only imagine the type of house this future poet laureate grew up in!Look he is not the first guy.Remember that psudeo-intelectual from New Jersey Amiri Barka?Probably the only black who could read in the whole Newark.He also had some nasty stuff

I guess this also falls under the arts catagory and you can't sensor art

Just playing devil's advocate: Are you sure the poem wasn't meant to be ironic or show an alternate viewpoint or something?After all it is Hitler's supposed perspective not the boy's own.

I'm all for protecting our people but I find that these things often get blown out of proportion...Regardless of intent however based on the lines shown in the article it may be a good poem but not one that should be distributed to school aged children.

Regardless of intent however based on the lines shown in the article it may be a good poem but not one that should be distributed to school aged children.

That's my point. Ironic or not, (I'm sure it was meant to be)a poem with the wording that this contained is not an appropriate choice for a collection being distributed to adolescents. I tend to think the irony will be lost on these youths.

I would actually go a small step further than Shifra - there are times when children should be suppressed in what they say/express: I would be very upset if a child started swearing or saying other improper ideas, particularly if they were not old enough to understand them. If your child swears, do you not tell them not to do it?

In this case, *if* the child was presenting it as ironic/alternative view/show how sick Hitler was, that is fine for that child; if they are not able to appreciate that, but instead was just spewing hate, I would 'suppress' it a bit more. Either way, I'd agree that other children shouldn't be reading it.

As a note: Bishul Akum, I'm not the anon from above, but your statement was bigoted.

I'm speechless at the idiocy of the publisher and the competition organisers.

OK, not quite speechless:

The first thing that occurs to me is to ask whether Gideon Taylor isn't a Jewish name?

The second thing that occurs to me is that this is what you get when you encourage the "non-judgemental attitude", the atittude of trying to understand every point of view without making any judgement on it. Gita Sereny made a huge attempt to understand how Albert Speer thought (Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth) but she didn't refrain from judgement. The publisher and the competition organisers seem to think there's a virtue in trying to understanding Hitler without judging him.

Jews are virtually invisible in the UK. We are one half of one per cent of the population and we are so very English that we don't like to make a fuss. A similar poem about a more visible minority would not have been published - e.g. a poem written from the point of view of the people who murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence.